Goes on umpteenth free week.
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Tag: Vanguard
Destiny 2 Will Remove Vanguard Tokens
Find An Exploit For Valorant’s Anti-Cheat? Get $100 Grand
And I’m not talking about the chocolate.
Continue reading “Find An Exploit For Valorant’s Anti-Cheat? Get $100 Grand”
Week In Review: Sony Offline Entertainment
I’ve discovered a newfound love for Ultima Forever. Once you carve out the ridiculous cash shop mechanics, get rid of gear degradation, and drop gold keys like they’re candy, the game is a lot of fun to play. It’s almost disappointing that Electronic Arts will be shutting down Ultima Forever on August 29th, but it’s hard to say that it wasn’t deserved. Mythic Entertainment will best be known for Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online, the latter being much beloved by its fans despite its commercial failings, its other recent ventures (Wrath of Heroes, Ultima Forever, Dungeon Keeper Mobile) will likely fade into obscurity.
Naturally, when it rains it pours. This week also marked the sunsetting of two more Sony Online Entertainment titles. I can’t say I was entirely surprised when SOE revealed that Vanguard couldn’t be fixed due to issues deep within the game’s engine. Vanguard was a collection of great ideas implemented rather shoddily on a foundation made of crepe paper. The idea that the game wasn’t runing a profit is hardly surprising when you factor in that the game spent so long in a dormant state that, in 2011, it was a massive surprise just to see the game getting patched. Vanguard did go free to play, but the response was meek at best.
Wizardry Online, on the other hand, will continue to live on in its native Japan. Depending on how they view the market, Gamepot may either decide to open up a global server or bring on a different publisher to host Wizardry Online in North America and Europe. Given the game’s tepid response under Sony Online Entertainment, however, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Finally, this week also saw the announcement that DUST 514 would be shutting down its Oceanic servers due to players taking advantage of the low population to boost their accounts.
Firefall launched this week, a sentence I never honestly saw myself getting the chance to say. NCSoft continues to add more races and classes to Lineage II with the latest expansion, despite the game’s age and waning profit. And finally pigs have officially grown wings and made me breakfast using their own bacon, because Square Enix has opened up 14-day trials for Final Fantasy XIV.
I plan to wrap up every Week in Review with a piece from MMO Fallout history.
This Week in 2009: On The Brink: Planetside
Planetside, touted as the first true MMOFPS, takes yet another turn towards its ultimate demise, with the announcement that the game’s two servers will finally merge into one, to deal with lacking population. The original five servers have gradually closed and merged, and currently the game houses two servers; One North American and one European.
As far as MMO’s go, server closure is one of the first lines of defense in keeping a game alive. When empty servers spread players thinly, forcing them into a smaller space will give an illusion of player count, and may inspire ex-players to jump back into the renewed action, creating a snowball effect that brings more and more players to the game.
Sadly, if history has taught us anything, it is that this mantra will more than likely fail for Planetside, a game that has been on a downward slope for years now. Planetside’s status as pioneer in MMOFPS action, massive scale battles, and focus on skills above levels, will not help it in its fall from grace.
The merge will go ahead on August 25th. Once Planetside is consolidated on to one server, it is anyone’s guess as to how long it has to live afterwards.
SOE Shutting Down Four MMOs
Sony Online Entertainment has announced that four of their MMOs will be shut down later this year: Wizardry Online, Free Realms, Vanguard, and Clone Wars Adventures. Free Realms and Clone Wars are set to shut down March 31st with Wizardry and Vanguard following on July 31st. Sony attributes the sunsetting of Free Realms and Clone Wars as being due to its user base growing up and finding new games, while Wizardry Online was due to a mutual agreement with the publisher. In the case of Vanguard, SOE was unable to get past technical issues with the game’s outdated engine.
player population numbers have decreased making it difficult to justify the resources needed to support and update this game. This is an older game and we’re experiencing more and more technical challenges to continue running and updating it in a way you deserve. Simply put, these are issues that cannot be fixed in the long term and as a player, we would be doing you a disservice and going against our company commitment to provide the best gameplay experiences. So given this information, sunsetting the game later this year is the inevitable conclusion.
Vanguard is the oldest title to shut down, having launched in 2007, with Free Realms and Clone Wars going live in 2009 and 2010 respectively. Wizardry Online launched last January. Vanguard being shut down is especially saddening when you consider that (prior to being stopped by technical issues) the company seemed rather excited to start working on it. Still, the good news is that workers affected by the shutdowns were apparently absorbed into the SOE hive mind to work on other projects.
(Source: Vanguard Announcement, Clone Wars Announcement, Wizardry Announcement, Free Realms Announcement)
Brad McQuaid Responds To Vanguard Criticism
Brad McQuaid is seeking eight hundred thousand dollars via Kickstarter for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, and not everyone is falling over themselves to hand their money over. For many, the disastrous launch of Vanguard is still fresh on their minds, an event that is causing them to be less than confident in Pantheon’s prospects. One gamer, Clmeas left the following comment on a Kotaku article promoting the Kickstarter.
Microsoft gave him $40,000,000 to make Vanguard with almost absolute creative control and he still released an unfinished, buggy, POS of a game after 5 YEARS in development.
The comment garnered a response from McQuaid himself, noting some of the challenges that Vanguard faced in its development from internal and external sources.
Microsoft funded us to almost $30M, after which there was a regime change at Microsoft and virtually all of the people we had been working with disappeared. The new people didn’t want to make Vanguard… they really didn’t want to make an MMO at all, and if they were, they wanted a Wow-clone-beater. We broke away from them and I turned to SOE and got them to fund as much as they could. Unfortunately, it fell short of the 6 months we needed, and the game was released too early.
WoW came in around $80M and they took at least 3 years to develop it (probably more, but 3 years after they *announced* the game — I have a feeling they were already working on it).
Star Wars: The Old Republic took at least 3 years, had hundreds of people involved, and cost between $150M and $200M (no one really knows for sure except the publisher).
Anyway, just some numbers for perspective. In any case, Vanguard was released too early but if you go check it out now it’s a solid game. The world is underpopulated but beyond that I’m still very proud of what we accomplished.
It’s good to see that McQuaid is proud of what Vanguard has become. You can check out the Kickstarter for Pantheon here or follow the link on the side-bar.
(Source: Kotaku)
Vanguard Merging Down To One Server
Generally when an MMO hits that point where it has merged down to its last server, you can bet that the game is either one step away from the chopping block at worst, or will remain in maintenance mode for the rest of its life at best. Sadly this is exactly what Vanguard players are experiencing as Sony has announced that the Halgar and Telon servers will be merging as of April 4th. The servers will be down for twenty four hours, after which the Halgar server will remain online until the end of business on April 9th. All characters above level 10, plus those below level 10 which have logged in since October 3rd, 2012, and before the April 3rd transfer, will be moved over to Telon.
Halgar characters will also be reimbursed for the cost of their houses, however they will have to find new housing when their characters transfer over. For more details, click the link below to see the transfer FAQ.
(Source: Vanguard)
Vanguard Opens Up More Features For Free
What are you thinking about, Vanguard? Why so distant all the time? Reaction to Vanguard’s free to play transition last summer has been rather positive, but at the same time pretty lukewarm, with players noting the very restrictive free to play model that SOE had implemented as the primary reason behind the negativity. Before Vanguard even went free to play, Sony Online Entertainment was already doing patchwork on opening the game up more to free players, and since then the team has been working on fixing bugs, working on content changes, and planning for future updates.
In a post today, Producer Henry Burgess has revealed that both free players and members will receive a boost in Vanguard:
We have decided to expand and improve on the free- to-play offering for Vanguard. That means everyone can play any race, any class, to any level for free. You can also own a house, create guilds, and do a bunch of other things.
Free players will have full access to all of the game’s races and classes, as well as enjoying an unlimited gold purse and the game’s 50 active-quest limit. Free players will be able to have four bag slots, normal broker fees, 75 bank slots (compared to 25), as well as full access to caravans, brotherhoods, the ability to create a guild, and the ability to own a house. Members will enjoy a boost of 50% bonus experience, 12 character slots, double faction gains, a 10% discount at the marketplace, 20% discounted broker fees, two houses (20% discount on upkeep), 20% discounted mail fees, and a 20% discount on most other fees in-game. All of this with the other features members are already accustomed to (500 Station cash, customer support, etc).
(Source: Vanguard)
ProSiebenSat.1 Deal Altered, More Titles Heading To Europe
You may remember back in February when Sony Online Entertainment announced that they would be opening up a multi-year partnership with European ProSiebenSat.1 Games Group. The list of games affected includes DC Universe, Everquest II, Free Realms, Everquest Next, and Planetside 2. Oddly enough, and without explanation, the list did not include Everquest, Vanguard, and the upcoming Wizardry Online, leading to speculation that ProSiebenSat simply wasn’t interested in the titles.
Well, bad news bears (those of you expecting that Sony would continue hosting said titles in Europe). Today Sony announced that the deal with ProSiebenSat.1 has been expanded. The set list is to include the aforementioned Everquest, Vanguard, Wizardry Online, and the recently released Bullet Run.
“ProSiebenSat.1 is the ideal partner for us to reach an even broader audience in Europe. We are confident that the combination of the media power provided by ProSiebenSat.1 and our expertise in developing high-quality online games will appeal to players in a new and captivating way, creating the perfect prerequisite for achieving great success with our games in Europe.”
The community is once again split over this decision.
(Source: Everquest Forums)
John Smedley On: PlaneSide 2
John Smedley dropped by Reddit for an “Ask Me Anything,” and the community certainly did ask him anything. Naturally, the Q&A started with Smedley being asked, once again, to apologize for Star Wars Galaxies, which he did. For the sake of time, I’ve compiled a few of his more interesting answers.
In regards to Planetside 2’s premium subscription:
“subscription will NOT remotely be something you need to have. just something nice to have.”
When asked about an Everquest Classic (non-progression) server:
“if that’s what EQ fans wanted we would”
On Everquest Next:
“we plan to make EQ Next great by going places MMOS have never gone. I know that’s vague but it’s coming”
On advertising DUST 514:
“I’m sure helping get the word out. It is a great game. CCP is awesome.”
On balance in Planetside 2:
“At it’s heart, PS2 is similar to PS1. play it and let me know what you think.”
On hand-holding in MMOs:
“I despise the hand holding shit. hate it in a big way.”
On Vanguard:
“It’s going F2P next week with many members of the original team on it! It’s getting a lot of love.”
On streaming Planetside 2:
“We might even be working on a secret twitch.tv and youtube streaming thing I can’t talk about that might or might not be going in as I’m writing this.”
If you want to look through the comments yourself, check em out here:
(Source: Reddit)
MMO Fallout 
